Experimental evaluation of the T100-3 stationary plasma thruster and xenon propellant system for the RHETT-1 program

Garner, Charles E.; Mueller, Juergen; Vasin, Anatoly L.; Lasinsky, Mikhail; Petrosov, V. A.; Wetch, Joseph R.; Brett, Ned

doi:10.2514/6.1996-2968

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…The emphasis of this work was the evaluation of Russian technology with respect to potential missions, thruster performance, lifetime and integration issues. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] The conclusion of these evaluations was that Russian Hall thruster technology offered near optimal specific impulse and favorable thrust-topower with tractable integration concerns for many near Earth applications. NASA, and others, extrapolated these data to various power levels for use in spacecraft/mission design trade studies considering the advantages of increased spacecraft power for electric propulsion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

NASA's Hall thruster program

Jankovsky

Jacobson

Rawlin

et al. 2001

37th Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit

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NASA's Hall thruster program has base research and focused development efforts in support of the Advanced Space Transportation Program, Space-Based Program and various other programs. The objective of the base research is to gain an improved understanding of the physical processes and engineering constraints of Hall thrusters to enable development of advanced Hall thruster designs. Specific technical questions that are current priorities of the base effort are: (1) How does thruster life vary with operating point? (2) How can thruster lifetime and wear rate be most efficiently evaluated? (3) What are the practical limitations for discharge voltage as it pertains to high specific impulse operation (high discharge voltage) and high thrust operation (low discharge voltage)? (4) What are the practical limits for extending Hall thrusters to very high input powers? and (5) What can be done during thruster design to reduce cost and integration concerns? The objective of the focused development effort is to develop a 50 kW-class Hall propulsion system, with a milestone of a 50 kW engineering model thruster/system by the end of program year 2006. Specific program year 2001 efforts, along with the corporate and academic participation, are described.

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